Quotes of the day

posted at 8:01 pm on February 21, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The images coming from Venezuela over the past few weeks have been arresting: Troops shooting, protesters hurling rocks, people bleeding.

Just like the tear gas that clouds the scenes in photos, a complete picture of the truth in the confrontations is also hazy.

Allegations of censorship, self-censorship and photo manipulation have made it difficult for news consumers — especially Venezuelans — to form a complete picture of what is going on.

A media blackout has stymied the flow of information during some of the most intense days of clashes between anti-government protesters and authorities. In addition, strict regulations have pressured media outlets to tread softly when it comes to covering the violence.

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Venezuela has revoked the accreditation of CNN’s Caracas-based reporter Osmary Hernandez, the US news network says.

Two other CNN journalists who had been sent to Venezuela to cover the country’s political crisis also had their working permits cancelled. …

On Thursday, during a live broadcast, Mr Maduro threatened to “take action” against CNN unless it ceased what he described as “hostile coverage”.

For evidence, just compare the timeline of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s handpicked successor, with that of opposition leader Leopoldo López, the primary organizer of the student-led protests. Maduro’s Twitter feed is a frenetic mix of threats to his “fascist” rivals, exhortations to carry out Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution, and retweets of messages from sympathizers (including, eerily, a series of tweets written by Chávez shortly before his death last year). López’s is more spartan—informing supporters about the logistics for marches and urging them to fight non-violently for human rights.

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Why this picture is not being shown on American TV ? U.S. media is doing a terrible job covering Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/LGoru0cCgY

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and Mercosur voiced their strong support for President Maduro — to no great surprise, given their ties to Venezuela. But the region’s less ideological multilateral organizations — UNASUR, CELAC, AND CARICOM — have hesitated to characterize the chaos and violence in Venezuela.

Most notably, the Organization of American States (OAS), arguably the regional body best positioned to push back against the apparent human-rights violations and threats to democratic integrity, gave a meek response to the developments.

The only definitive voice or leadership on the issue has come from ALBA and Mercosur — with no multilateral leadership condemning Maduro’s government for the violence and human-rights violations it perpetrates, turning a blind eye to Venezuela’s disregard for democratic institutions, failure to protect dissenting views and flagrant disrespect for civil liberties — press freedom chief among them. And all of this raises another concern: Is the region surrendering its role in advancing these causes — causes so central to our hemispheric identity?

***

From Mexico to Brazil, most Latin American governments have remained impassive as the Venezuelan government violently cracks down on growing protests, arrests opposition leaders and censors most of the country’s media.

Ideological affinity with Venezuela’s leftist government and economic interests, including the country’s oil largess, have complicated the response—or lack thereof—in the region. “The silence has been deafening,” said Michael Shifter, the president of the Washington-based think tank, the Inter-American Dialogue.

That lack of condemnation gives Mr. Maduro a lot of political leeway to increase the pressure on his opponents, according to former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda. “There is no Latin American government that is going to lift a finger,” he said.

-Sebastian Piñera, the president of Chile, has asked for an increased respect for freedom and human rights. “We want to ask for both sides to respect freedoms, including the freedom of speech and human rights, which all citizens should enjoy on behalf of the government,” he said at a cathedral in Santiago.

-Colombia‘s president Juan Manuel Santos urged Venezuela’s government to meet with its opposition. “From Colombia, I would like to call for calm, for opening channels of communication among the different political forces in Venezuela in order to ensure the stability of the country and respect for institutions and fundamental freedoms,” he said on Feb. 18.

-Peru‘s president Ollanta Humala simply pleaded for peace and dialogue (link in Spanish).

***

“This country can’t stay like this for much longer. If it’s not lack of food, it is the fear of being killed when you step out of your house to go to work”, he said. “I would like to wake up without this fear,” he added. “I have never seen this country in this state of total collapse. We are going from bad to worse, and we are losing faith”.

“Ya esta bueno ya”, is phrase which Venezuelans are hearing with increasing frequency. Roughly translated as “Enough already”, the slogan captures a wide-spread sense of discontent and growing uncertainty over the country’s future.

Scenes of political turmoil have played out for two weeks in cities across Venezuela. Pockets of destruction can be seen in the public squares of Caracas, Valencia, Maracaibo, San Cristobal and Puerto Ordaz. At least five people have died in clashes and dozens have been wounded.

Government officials claim the protests are limited, but the sense of tension – as well as government repression – is escalating. On Wednesday night, groups of protesters across the country were dispersed by National Guard troops firing teargas and rubber bullets in what has been the strongest show of government force so far.

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Venezuela’s jailed protest leader urged supporters on Friday to keep demonstrating peacefully against President Nicolas Maduro despite violence that has killed at least six people and rocked the OPEC member nation. …

“To the police, soldiers, prosecutors and judges: do not obey unjust orders, do not become the face of repression,” Lopez said in his note from prison.

“To the youth, to the protesters, I ask you to stay firm against violence, and to stay organized and disciplined. This is everyone’s struggle.”

It seems to me that this was always the inevitable end game to the disastrous policies of the late President Hugo Chavez. Diverting funds from capital investment into the nation’s oil fields was politically popular. But it was also disastrous: Venezuela’s oil is sludgy stuff, hard to get at and hard to refine, and it requires a high level of capital expenditure just to keep production level. Predictably, production is now well below pre-Chavez levels. That wasn’t so much of a problem as long as oil prices kept rising, because they offset lost production. But the price of Venezuela’s crude is no longer rising…

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The second Chavez tool of power was the shrewd deployment of the nation’s oil wealth to buy support from favored constituencies. Support Chavez, and you might get a free house stocked with appliances, a government job or at least a new playground.

Chavez held the price of gasoline to pennies per gallon and offered subsidized rice and beans in government-owned shops. Meanwhile, he withdrew police protection from the wealthier neighborhoods that despised him, deploying criminal violence as a de facto tool of political repression.

Now, however, Venezuela is running out of cash to pay for these support-buying schemes. Industries are shuttering because they cannot obtain foreign currency to buy crucial parts. Interest rates on Venezuelan debt have jumped past 15%. The economy, which managed 1% growth in 2013, is now shrinking as economic activity other than oil and gas production grinds to a stop.

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Maduro’s second major crisis involves the loss of support within the country’s armed forces. Hugo Chávez commanded the respect or fear of uniformed services because he was a military veteran, and he cemented their loyalty by giving them lucrative posts and abetting their involvement in narcotrafficking and other corruption. Of course, some of the military — including respected retirees — steered clear of serious corruption but remained loyal to their commander-in-chief.

That military pillar of the regime has been crumbling since Chávez’s death last March. Maduro has earned little respect within their ranks. Those who have rallied around him are men he has coopted with new assignments and the very corrupt narcomilitares — notably National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello — who are hoping to hold on to their illicit fortunes by preserving the criminal and unaccountable regime.

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If you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner in Venezuela, you’re not likely to keep throwing good money after bad there, especially if you’re a retailer like Daka. Last November Maduro ordered soldiers to occupy Daka’s five stores and forced managers to sell electronics at lower prices. In some cases looters just helped themselves.

Reuters reported that Maduro was outraged at a store selling a washing machine for 54,000 bolivars — $8,600 at the official rate. That might seem high until you hear from a business owner: “Because they don’t allow me to buy dollars at the official rate of 6.3, I have to buy goods with black market dollars at about 60 bolivars, so how can I be expected to sell things at a loss? Can my children eat with that?” said the businessman, who asked Reuters not to identify him.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement regarding the crisis in Venezuela:

“As opposition protests drag into their second week in Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro is taking a page out of the Castro playbook to violently oppress Venezuelans who are demanding an end to his disastrous rule. Activists have been detained and abused, and even shot dead in the streets. Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has emerged as a powerful voice for economic and political freedom, has been arrested and faces the summary judgment of a makeshift kangaroo court. But the perseverance of the protestors in the face of these thuggish tactics suggests there are still many who do not accept the failed socialist policies of Hugo Chavez and his hand-picked successor as inevitable.

“Venezuela can and should be free and prosperous, not suffering under the withering blight of violent crime, rampant inflation and shortages of basic necessities—not to mention close allegiances to Iran and Cuba.

***

Disturbed by #Venezuela‘s aggression against citizens & reporters. The right to protest & freedom of press are vital to a strong democracy.

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if you get the Military channel on your teles
there is a special on Black Ops about the
hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi…
I think I remember the end of this …
Two Mk84 1000 pounders down his chimney…

going2mars on February 22, 2014 at 1:13 AM

.
That was the deal . . . . . as I recall, the jets had been airborne on another mission that got “scrubbed”, and were in the process of returning to base, when they were ordered on this other strike that got ‘Zarqawi…
.
Glenn opened up his radio show that morning with an live, on-air celebration about it.

“Ya esta bueno ya”, is phrase which Venezuelans are hearing with increasing frequency. Roughly translated as “Enough already”, the slogan captures a wide-spread sense of discontent and growing uncertainty over the country’s future.

Dunno but “YEBY” almost sounds like” teabaggers”. No doubt the Oboobi admin is taking notes and stocking up on riot gear to deal with us dissidents, anarchists, saboteurs and otherwise rightwing capitalist nuts when we show and demonstrate our discontent in the comingdays.

a 1996 328i is a yuppy car…not a real bimmer..power everything..
my brother in the bay area has one…no rag top on his..
(if you ever want to trade it in I have friends at nickalexanders)
the old 2002′s had no power nothing..
weighed like 2100lbs…drives like a sports car tank..
its wonderful…
think my 2002 is faster than my JCW mini cooper…

a 1996 328i is a yuppy car…not a real bimmer..power everything..
my brother in the bay area has one…no rag top on his..
(if you ever want to trade it in I have friends at nickalexanders)
the old 2002′s had no power nothing..
weighed like 2100lbs…drives like a sports car tank..
its wonderful…
think my 2002 is faster than my JCW mini cooper…

going2mars on February 22, 2014 at 1:47 AM

Heh heh heh, it may be a yuppy car, but like I said, it handles really nice. My Vette handles like a damned sports car tank. 400 hp custom built 5.7 liter 350 in it absolutely refuses to pass a fricking gas station.

my brother and his girl are bay area yuppys..foodies…libs..loons
they went to the factory in Germany to pick it up..
did Europe for 6 or 7 weeks..dropped the car off in Paris..
and flew back to the bay…waited at the docks…typ san fran..
do you know nick alexander’s bmw in the city??

its north of you in LA..
best bmw prices in so cal.
they just got in the new 2series cars..

going2mars on February 22, 2014 at 2:04 AM

While I genuinely love my BMW, I am soo totally not part of the BMW culture. You could say I pretty much live out in the countryside, rural San Diego county. Lot’s of wonderful twisty turny curvy roads. Most, but not all of the farms here are gone now, but we still have more feed/grain stores than liqueur stores.

Sometimes when I’m out and about on the weekends, I see the BMW club folks coming up on of my favorite roads, it’s usually rather amusing. 40 or 50 BMW’s will pass me going the opposite direction, and invariably I get a few looks from drivers and passengers that look like they are thinking…. Hey… you’re going the wrong way…

I’m just not a club joiner, got a friend who has been trying to get me to join his corvette club for years, but I keep turning them down as well.

I don’t join the clubs either..
but I do go to the tracks and watch them race…
next month is the 12 hours of sebring…68 sports cars on the grid..
and you have two of them already….bmw & vette so you would split your rooting I guess??
never had that problem

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

And CNN isn’t the only media outlet under siege. Reporters have been detained, beaten and robbed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Media blackouts, arrests and a campaign of harassment against dissenting voices has become a hallmark of this administration,” the group’s deputy director said on Thursday.

At times, the government’s reach extended beyond traditional media, stifling access to news online. Last week Venezuelan Twitter users periodically lost access to photos on the platform, and this week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted, an entire city — San Cristobal, an opposition stronghold in the state of Táchira — reportedly lost Internet connectivity altogether. (El Universal reported that service was being restored Friday evening.)

Just popping in to say hey and then off. Observation. I’m seeing adverts on Facebook and other social media outlets running more and more ads about not just Global Warming, but old-style polluter accusations at specific GOP office holders and Conservatives in general. Is this what they’re going to be pushing because they can’t run on health care?

If it is, good luck with convincing people about “global warming”, when most of the country is still digging out from one of the worse winters in years.

Flora Duh on February 22, 2014 at 8:02 AM

I left a pretty simply comment that fracking seems to be proving to be quite safe and the whole Global Warming hypothesis has just gotten silly considering the 17 year cool down. The reasoned and respectful reply my and similar comments was, “Sad to see so many folks from Dumbfu*ckistan commenting here.”

“In the last 18,000 years Earth’s temperature has been rising. For the first 7,500 years of this period temperatures rose by 7 degrees Celsius and this brought about a large scale glacial retreat. Prior to this, extensive parts of the continents of Asia, Europe and North America were covered in ice. In the subsequent 10,000 years temperatures rose by a further one degree.

Earth and the Sun both go through a complicated series of cycles* and the interaction causes warming or cooling of the planet, it’s done this since the formation of our planet a little over 4.5 billion years ago.

The long term (glacial / intergalcial) trend sees temperatures of our planet vary by about 20 degrees C over typically 50 million years, within these long trends are much shorter trends. Whilst the short term trend is one of warming we’re also in a much longer cooling trend which has been ongoing for a little over 50 million years.

The current cause for concern is due to the fact that temperatures are now rising much faster than can be attributed to natural cause . Warming has accelerated to 156 times the rate over the 10,000 years prior to the Industrial revolution and 17 times the rate during the glacial retreat of 10,500 to 18,000 years ago.”

First, I believe the above to be true except for “are now rising faster than can be attributed to natural causes”. That statement may or not be correct as science has not proven the statement to be correct.

Second, from the beginning of the last ice age till TODAY, quality of life has improved greatly. So far global warming is a good thing. I have read that for every 3C of cooling from today’s average temps 1 billion folks could die. Little more complicated than that so do your own research, but global cooling front the current data point would not be good for us humans.

Third, since global warming has been a good thing so far…..I want to first have scientific proof when the warming becomes bad before my thinking goes forward.

Finally, once I understand the third point, we can then talk about man’s effect on the climate. Until then, you ain’t getting my money to fix a problem that is not understood.

Protesters have taken the offices of President Viktor Yanukovich, and the Ukrainian president’s whereabouts are a mystery. One protester told Reuters “We will guard the building until the next president comes.” (The New York Times is reporting that Yanukovich has fled the capital.)

The president’s administration, for its part, said it will oversee “a fully responsible transfer of power under the constitution.

Read on for live updates out of Ukraine. Watch live footage from Kiev in the video player above.
by Amy Tennery (Reuters) 8:34 AM

Good read, KJ. I never watch Jimmy Fallon, but of course I heard about all these examples of his slant. The thing with Sprinsteen was just downright mean. This is what passes for entertainment nowadays.

NBC used to be the network of Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Laugh-In, Andy Williams . . . And they all hosted Christmas Specials. I could cry just thinking about it.

“The current cause for concern is due to the fact that temperatures are now rising much faster than can be attributed to natural cause . Warming has accelerated to 156 times the rate over the 10,000 years prior to the Industrial revolution and 17 times the rate during the glacial retreat of 10,500 to 18,000 years ago.”

HL, could you name the source of the quote or post a link? (Is the source credible, IOW?) Without a few more figures to plug in, I can’t tell how this lines up with other opinions on the subject.